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Is it Time to Ban All Automatic Weapons?

Submitted by Guest Blogger, Lawrence Rafferty

In light of the tragic shooting today in Arizona, I have to wonder aloud if automatic weapons should be banned by this country.  I realize that the 2nd Amendment right to own a gun is strongly defended by the NRA and other right-wing groups, but I am sick and tired of reading about all of the shootings the past couple of years.  Whether it was the shootings earlier this year at various United States Marine sites around the country or the California shootout in July with the guy who was trying to attack the ACLU and the TIDES non-profit organization; the vitriol seems to be on the rise.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40978517/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/  And with politicians fanning the flames, this vitriol is not bound to be diminished anytime soon.

The Second Amendment is a very concise Amendment.  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am2  We have seen various attempts over the years by the Feds and many States and municipalities to restrict gun ownership.  The recent Supreme Court case of McDonald , et al vs.  City of Chicago, Illinois, et al affirmed the fundamental right of Americans to own a gun by a 5-4 decision.  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf  The McDonald decision did not give us any guidance on what kind of restrictions to that fundamental right the Supreme Court would allow.  However, how can automatic weapons or high-powered rifles be exempt from an outright banning of their ownership or at least significant restrictions on their use? Can a good faith argument really be made that an automatic weapon is necessary for personal protection? 

The Supreme Court Justices do not live in a bubble and they must see what damage these weapons have already brought to families across the nation.  Don’t they?

369 thoughts on “Is it Time to Ban All Automatic Weapons?”

  1. Gyges,

    I don’t have much time tonight to respond in depth other than to say I agreed with Bud’s post as to possibilities …

    I always … when I have the time to respond … dramatize the deaths of children when such deaths are caused by random gun violence. I’m fascinated by the lengths to which people will go in defending their guns even in those situations. If you read the responses you will find lots of assumptions as to what I was arguing and lots of answers to claims I never made. It’s fascinating. (I never wrote about semi-automatic or automatic banning … I momentarily hi-jacked the thread away from that … on purpose so that I could identify the gun-lovers)

    Guns are firmly embedded in our culture and where the subject of guns is concerned I run counter-culture. No one will ever mount an argument good enough to sway my view and I know I will never mount an argument good enough to move the culture in the direction I believe it should go … all at once. I’m content to go step by step … no matter how small each step may be.

    I simply tweak the conversation with a tsk … tsk, gun-lover, there’s another dead child.

    I was struck momentarily dumb by the brilliance of Bud’s response. I am quite sincere about that. I have copied his suggestions and sent them to numerous friends who actively work to change the gun laws and save children’s lives.

    Step by step …

  2. Jason,
    I am sorry to take so long to respond. I actually had to do work today! I didn’t say that I had all of the answers, but something certaintly has to be done to prevent mentally ill people from being able to buy guns. And maybe it is time to reinstitute the assault weapon ban so these large capacity magazines can also be banned. Jason, take a look at the murder component of the violent crime statistics that you linked to. The murder results were not as good and that strikes to the heart of our discussion.

  4. Elaine-
    That was the problem. Thank you very much!

    Here’s part one:

    rafflaw-
    “I never implied that improving on our restrictions on guns would be easy, but it seems obvious to me that too many people with issues or health problems are getting their hands on guns. The only place to start is at the beginning.”

    I was sincere when I asked how we can accomplish this. No one wants violent mentally ill people getting guns. But there’s a whole trainload of issues that have to be dealt with. What conditions get you on the banned list? Where does the diagnosis come from – does your psychiatrist have to violate privilege and report your condition? And on and on.

    “I do not agree with you that crime has gone down since the Assault Weapon ban expired. Please provide a link to the site that backs up that claim. Thanks.”

    Sure. The ban expired in early 2004. Violent crime declined that year by 1.2% (http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/documents/CIUS_2004_Section2.pdf). In 2005, violent crime was up 2.3% (http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/about/crime_summary.html). It went up an additional 1.9% in 2006 (property crime declined both years).

    Part 2 next….

  6. C Kook:

    Look, I wouldn’t doubt that the government is lying about the kid. But I understand he failed a drug test (by the military). And the article I linked to said a judge called the kid a left-wing pot head. So we have probably established the young man smokes pot.

    He might do other drugs. He might drink. None of this means he won’t murder. It doesn’t mean he would. The point of bringing it up is to indicate the guy is a LEFTIST (like the woman he tried to assassinate.)

    And the only reason I brought that up is because the insane people on the left immediately started to blame the Tea Party and members of the right.

    In otherwords it isn’t about the biological effect of pot. It is about the fact that left wingers (and also Libertarians) are usually the biggest fans of pot smoking.

    Maybe he ran out of weed. Who knows.

  7. Jason,

    If your comment had more than two links, it will remain in moderation limbo forever. If it did have more than two links, I suggest you repost your comment in two parts. That’s what I do now.

  8. For the record, last night I responded to Rafflaw’s request for evidence that crime went down after the AWB expired. The post is still sitting there listed as awaiting moderation. I’ve never seen that here on this board, is the post showing and if not, what in it is keeping it from being shown?

  9. RE: Former Federal LEO, January 9, 2011 at 12:44 am

    “Regarding the emotion behind the deaths, especially of the young girl, I think that no male can ever sense the same depth of emotion that a female senses when dealing with death.”

    I was given one x and one y chromosome at conception. Do I need to get my birth certificate and all other gender-labeling records corrected from male to female?

    Or does one of your thoughts misrepresent me as among those plausibly, albeit perchance mistakenly, based on mere chromosomes, labeled male?

    From time to time, I check my pistol. Healthways TopScore 175. I accept the constitutional mandate that I be prepared to defend my country, my civic duty as part of a well regulated militia.

    The constitution does not mandate my having any ammo, and so I don’t. I store my TopScore 175 with the safety set on “SAFE.”

    Release barrel latch, swing barrel to the limit of its rotation, swing barrel down, latch it, all the time with the safety set on “SAFE,” and, leaving the safety on “SAFE,” squeeze the trigger lightly. “POP” goes the SAFE air pistol, safe because I have no ammo.

    Sometimes a safety is itself not SAFE.

    One day, while we lived in Oak Park, Illinois and our adopted son, Michael was not yet 18, I noticed some dents in the plaster of the walls of his room.

    A few gentle words with him, and he showed me where he had hidden his TopScore 175, and then he asked me to keep it for him.

    I am still keeping it for him. I keep it as an icon, that I may remember to keep alive in in me a depth and breadth of raw affect (emotion to those not well versed in my language) I have been advised few people can experience, tolerate, or even imagine.

    The TopScore 175 story is real, the names have not been changed, to protect the innocent.

    The TopScore 175 is as real as is any other weapon. Hatred is as real as is any other weapon.

    As I write this, I pause every few words, the emotions I experience while writing this are as though like hydrogen bombs bursting in air.

    To paraphrase and augment some words found the libretto of Handel, “Messiah”:

    Why do the people so furiously rage together, tearing themselves apart as a way of striving toward wholeness?

    Could striving be the conundrum which drives us into hatred?

    What would carry us away from hatred?

    What is the antithesis of striving?

    Wei wu wei?

    Could the way from hatred be wei wu wei? Why not learn, why not begin today?

    We have a cat, named Lucy when she adopted us when she was sharing space with other cats at the Door County Humane Society.
    Lucy, in the way of cats, lives her name.

    My wife and I have seen no reason to change Lucy’s name to something else. As cats go, Lucy was already something else before she adopted us.

    “Lucy” is what she lives, wei wu wei is how she lives it.

    Is humans living in wei wu wei the path for saving humanity’s future day?

  10. Blouise,

    Tom Tancrado recently ran for governor here in Colorado. As part of his campaign he ran a particularly racist and nasty ad against the Democratic candidate, who happens to own a brew-pub.

    It turns out that a man committed murder while employed by the restaurant. The man was an illegal alien. The ad told the story and ended with a line about “illegal aliens ARE criminals DEADLY criminals.”

    On the other hand, I bet money I could find at least one news story in Denver in the last 10 years about someone who was in the country illegally saving a life.

    Anecdotes are infinitely important to the people who live them. That doesn’t mean that policy should be based on which story has the most visceral impact.

    Now, if you want to show studies that show that banning a certain type of gun in the U.S. would lead to less deaths, I’m game. We’ve got an entire world out there with different gun control laws. Heck, we’ve got a huge spectrum here in the States. I’m sure we can find comparable statistics. When it comes to limiting human actions, my default setting is “not without a good reason.”

    Otherwise your argument holds just as much weight as Tancrado’s.

    By the way, Go to just about any gun discussion in the last 3 years, and you’ll see me making the same request of people who claim “guns save lives.”

    Individual events are each part of the truth, not the whole.

    To those who say the difference between semi-and fully is not important,

    The form follows function. Fully automatics are designed to increase the ease of inflicting large amounts of damage with the weapon.

    The set up of my semi-automatic rifle is designed to be as precise and limited with the damage as possible.

    I’d say that’s a difference worth noting.

  11. Tootie: your knowledge of political ideaologies runs almost as deep as your knowledge about Switzerland

    pot smokers don’t go on gun rampages, they sit on the couch, eat doughnuts and watch Spongebob

  12. One other nasty little item on semi auto (each trigger pull shoots a cartridge) vs. auto (cartrideges discharge until pressure on the trigger is released) is the concept of “bump fire”. Bump fire is a method of manipulating the trigger to allow full automatic on a semi automatic designed weapon. I suggest those interested in this google “bump fire on Youtube”

    The most modified weapon around is the Ruger 10/22 rifle. It can be purchased at any K-mart or Wal-mart. It can be ‘modified’ by bump fire, or internal modifications to fire fully automatic burst. The weapons’ 10 round magazine can be augmented with 50 or 100 round drum magazines for its’ 22 cal cartridges. It can easily be modified into a suppressor-equipped (silencer) weapon with throw-away plastic water bottles and is virtually silent when used with low velocity ammo.

    Methods for illegally modifying this popular gun can be found on the internets too.

    We are swimning in a ocean of legal and illegal firearms. The only country with more weapons per capita is Switzerland–I am told anyway.

    Easy reloading of ammo (save rim fire 22’s) would negate any type of restriction on the supply of ammunition. As Pogo said, “we have met the enemy and he is us”.

    enough

  13. buckman: You are right about the magazine. I don’t know much about guns but am in the process of learning more.

  14. To Swarthmore Mom: The WEAPON (Glock) was NOT banned. the Magazine that holds the cartridges was BANNED, then re-instated.

    I would hope that this tragedy would move COngress to readdress the lack of a national database on firearms owners and guns themselves

  15. Rafflaw: “Finally, and to be fair, don’t you think the sharp stick comment is carrying it a little too far. I do agree precision is good, but I think the point got across to most of what I was trying to convey.”

    Not at all. All guns are ‘dangerous.’ Machine guns, i.e. automatic weapons (which includes weapons that switch between semi and fully automatic; e.g. AK-47’s) have been kept in an ultra unique category since 1934.

    Read Buckman’s post above and adjust for inflation since $200 dollars during the depression was a lot of money to pay for a ‘sharpened stick.’

  16. Buckeye:

    This is no time to cool the rhetoric. Obama wants to pull the plug on dissent, the internet, talk radio, and cable news (that which is not favorable to him, of corse). He continues apace to skirt congress and issue dictatorial edicts. It couldn’t be any more dangerous except if all this were true by the end of the day.

    As much of the truth has to be gotten out now. Once he pulls the plug, it will be too late.

    I’m sorry that Americans elected a dangerous, extremist, seditious, subversive, and power-hungry creep for president (again!). But I didn’t vote for him. I voted for a man who cherishes liberty.

    I cannot say this enough; the most dangerous group of people in human history (outside of the whole human race itself) is government, not lone wackos. When this much absolute power accrues to government it is almost too late.

    According to how hysterical the goverment gets regarding dangerous civilians, and according to their own psychotic ways of responding to them, by their own maniacal standard, it is the government who should always be most suspect, most monitored, most detained, and most surveilled.

    By the government’s own standards, the US government is a terrorist organization.

    Government is the most dangerous group of people among us. And our government no longer represents what the people have understood our government should be or what the Constitution says it cannot be. They could stop their totalitarian assault on the people, but they are not.

    Over 100 million innocent civilians were slaughtered last century and many more than that who lived were enslaved. This was done mostly by Marxists–Marxist government officials.

    Obama is a Marxist. I’m very sorry to say that because I risk my life and future saying so. Obama will try to destroy people like me. He views me as an enemy. And he is the one usurping! I’m the one demanding he obey his sworn oath to uphold he Constitution and still he tramples it.

    I wish I could be making this up, but I’m not. I have young people in my family and I don’t like to think this is the America they will inherit.

    And so, as tragic as this situation was in Arizona, it is no time to mince words. In fact, these are the most important times to get them out in very large chunks. Already some absurd Democrat politician wants another law (how insane is this guy? ANOTHER LAW!) against words and symbols uttered against government officials. Never mind that the Constitution says congress has NO authority to abridge speech or press.

    All the Democrats who died in Saturday’s slaughter lived longer lives than the people Democrats have prevented from living through abortion. So I hope they enjoyed the time they had on this earth, because, outside of the little child who died, most of them likely contintributed to denying the right to life for millions of others. These had no chance even for the smallest amount time here on earth precisely because Democrats have determined that they lawfully be denied such a chance.

    When Democrats and leftists witness the unjust taking of life, it could serve to teach them how cavalier they are about taking the lives of others through their own warped policies. But I’m afraid they are too depraved to learn this lesson.

    These are times that also try mens souls.

    Women’s too.

  19. rafflaw,

    Here’s something that has gotten me to thinking: On Saturday, you wrote this post about banning automatic weapons–and I wrote one about the loss of civil liberties. You got quite a discussion going with a lot of different people commenting. I got maybe a half dozen comments about the topic of my post. What does that say? Does it mean that people care much more about their right to own guns than they do about their other rights? Look at all the people who own guns and yet the government is still eroding and undermining many of our other liberties. The government hasn’t needed weapons to do that, did it?

    PatricParamedic wrote the following: “Like many, I suppose, I’m cursed by seeing both sides of this tortuous issue. Make no mistake, I find myself in a cold, silent rage over the liberties this government has taken, in the gouging of human rights, one by one by another. The very term ‘Patriot Act,’ for one, makes me want to puke.”

    *****

    It seems to me that people on both sides of the “gun” discussion are emotional. Maybe it would be good if we could get our citizens as riled up about the government taking some of our other liberties away. Maybe we could start another organization called NRA2–National Rights Association. I wonder if anyone would join??? And I wonder why we Americans only get “up in arms” about certain of our Constitutional rights and not others.

  20. Buckeye: I don’t know if anything can be agreed upon when you have congressional leaders like Michele Bachman calling for the citizenry to be “armed and dangerous”. One thing one would think that could be agreed upon would be not to sell guns to the mentally ill. Even that might be too much to hope for.

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